Forced marriage victims being betrayed by doctors

Young women fleeing forced marriages are being betrayed by GPs and benefits
staff who "collude" with families to return them against their
will, a senior police officer police has revealed.

By Patrick Sawer

12:45AM BST 29 Jun 2008

Doctors and Job Centre workers are breaching confidentiality rules and passing on vital information to families, allowing them to trace and punish Asian women who are attempting to escape coerced marriages and "honour"-based domestic violence.

Commander Steve Allen, who is the spokesman on forced marriages for Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), revealed that some doctors have informed girls' families that they have asked for the contraceptive pill, placing them at risk from fathers or brothers who believe this means the family's honour has been besmirched.

Cmdr Allen also told The Sunday Telegraph that Job Centre workers have accessed the National Insurance details of women who flee violent husbands, tracing where they collect benefits and passing the details on to their families so they can be found and forced back to their marital home.

In one case the family of an 18-year-old Pakistani woman attempted to kidnap her from a south London Job Centre after being tipped off by a member of staff. The plot was only foiled because her boyfriend intervened.

Cmdr Allen, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "GPs will tell fathers their daughter has seen them and is on the pill. That can get a girl killed. Public sector employees will pass on to a family member an individual's National Insurance number knowing it can be used to trace their new whereabouts around the country.

"There is collusion by certain public servants and people in a position of authority, such as doctors, which supports these offences. It means many victims don't have the faith or the trust to be able to report their situation."

Cmdr Allen revealed the problem is compounded by some police offices treating women fleeing a forced marriage as 'teenage runaways' and returning them to their families – unwittingly placing them in danger. This has led to a breakdown of trust in some areas, with young Asian girls scared to tell the police of their plight for fear their families will be told.

He also said that in some Asian communities women do not trust the police because they suspect local officers will inform their families if they attempt to flee a forced marriage. ACPO is now taking urgent steps to address the problem by increased training for officers in how to deal with cases.

Cmdr Allen's warnings come in advance of a European-wide campaign against forced marriages and honour-violence being launched tomorrow (Mon).

The campaign, backed by ACPO, will work with women and young people in Asian communities to highlight the problem and produce information material for victims who need help.

Shahien Taj, director of the Cardiff-based women's group The Henna Foundation, said: "Recently I had a case in Birmingham of a woman who said she can't trust the police because nine times she had run away and nine times the police returned her to her family where she got abused. Fortunately ACPO are now addressing this kind of problem openly and trying to do something about it."

In another case, reported to a women's group, a Chief Inspector offered to help a family track down a girl who fled a forced marriage.

Zalikha Ahmed, director of the South Yorkshire based women's refuge Apna Haq, told the Centre for Social Cohesion’s Crimes of the Community report: "We have to be careful with the police, especially the Asian ones. We don't visit the station where certain Asian officers are on because some of them are perpetrators and one of them on the record said he would not arrest someone who used force on his wife."

The 500 cases of forced marriage currently known to the authorities are only a tiny proportion of the numbers of young girls and even men suspected of being forced to marry against their will.

Every week one British citizen has to be rescued from Pakistan alone by the Foreign and Commonwealth's Forced Marriages Unit.

Cmdr Allen said such marriages result in years of assault and rape, psychological and emotional abuse for the victim, sometimes culminating in kidnapping and even murder when they try to flee.

Citing the case of 19-year-old Rukhsana Naz, a 19-year-old Derby girl killed by her mother and brother after she became pregnant from her childhood sweetheart, he said: "I would never have believed that a mother could hold down her pregnant daughter while her brother strangled her because she was carrying the child of a man she should not have been seeing."

But senior officers admit that despite the horror of such cases they face widespread complacency over the issue among certain police forces.

Cmdr Allen said: "We have too many areas where people don't believe this is an issue for them. But we are seeing situations across the country where victims, who are at extreme risk, are being moved to another part of the country, away from their home towns, by their families.

"We also are talking here about bounty hunters and professional killers being used to track down relatives and these people are going to be killed. This is about child protection, human rights and young people having their lives destroyed and all too often being murdered because they dared to love with their heart."